By KEN HERMAN, COX NEWS SERVICE

Published 9:00 pm, Monday, March 21, 2005

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, now championing the right of Terri Schiavo's parents to decide if her feeding tube should be reinserted, signed a Texas law in 1999 giving spouses top priority in making such decisions.

Hours after his early morning signing of a federal law sending the Schiavo case to federal court, Bush yesterday praised the hurry-up congressional action and said it gives the Florida woman's parents "another opportunity to save their daughter's life."

In siding with Schiavo's parents, who have battled her husband over removing the feeding tube that has kept her alive for 15 years, Bush ran counter to a measure he signed into law in Texas in 1999.

The state law says that in cases in which a patient has not signed a directive about life-prolonging care, the patient's spouse -- unless there is a court-appointed guardian -- makes the call. The patient's parents are listed third, behind "reasonably available adult children" and ahead of "the patient's nearest living relative."

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., noted that the Texas law also allows caregivers to withhold treatment "at the point that futility has been reached and there is no longer any hope of survival or of additional health care measures being used to sustain life."

Wasserman Schultz said Bush's signing of the Texas law "seems to conflict with his position today."

At an event yesterday in Tucson, Ariz., Bush made brief mention of the Schiavo case but did not mention the Texas law.

"This is a complex case with serious issues," he said, "but in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life."

The White House yesterday defended Bush's signing of the 1999 state statute. Spokesman Scott McClellan said that law provided additional protections for patients facing death after hospitals decide that treatment is futile. Before 1999, some hospitals were giving only 72-hour notice before ending such treatment.

The new law set a 10-day period during which patients' representatives can seek a transfer to a facility that will continue the treatment.

Dallas lawyer Tom Mayo, who helped draft the 1999 law, said the Schiavo case would have come out the same under the Texas statute.

"In Texas our law would protect the decision that Michael Schiavo made, with her physicians, to remove the artificial nutrition hydration just the way Florida law does," said Mayo, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law.

The Texas law was intended to control in cases in which medical teams and patients' representatives disagree on treatment. In the Schiavo case, the medical team and Schiavo's husband agreed that there was no hope of improvement in her condition, determined by lower courts to be a "persistent vegetative state."

The Texas law, as in Florida, allows other family members to go to state court to challenge decisions about withholding care.

The 1999 Texas measure was backed by National Right to Life and sponsored by state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, a vocal Bush critic. Coleman said yesterday he saw nothing inconsistent in Bush's signing of the state law and the new federal law.

"The (state) bill was so non-controversial it was on the consent calendar in the House," Coleman said, referring to the process that allows unopposed bills to sail through with no debate.